Transgender women athletes banned from Olympics under new IOC eligibility policy
Lausanne, Switzerland: Transgender female athletes are now excluded from the Olympics after the IOC adopted a new eligibility policy in line with US President Donald Trump’s executive order on women’s sports ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
“Eligibility for any women’s category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological women,” the International Olympic Committee said in a statement Thursday, “determined based on one-time SRY gene screening.”
It’s unclear how many trans women have competed at the Olympic level. No women who transitioned from male birth competed at the 2024 Paris Summer Games.
The IOC said the eligibility policy, which will apply from the LA Olympics in July 2028, “protects fairness, security and integrity in the women’s category.”
Stating that access to sports is a human right in the Olympic Charter, the IOC said: “This is not retroactive and does not apply to any grassroots or recreational sports programme.”
The International Olympic Committee, following a board meeting, released a 10-page policy document that also restricts female athletes, such as two-time Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya, from having medical conditions known as differences in sex development, or DSD.
The IOC and its president, Kirsty Coventry, wanted a clear policy rather than continuing to make recommendations to sports governing bodies, which had previously drawn up their own rules.
Coventry launched a review into the “preservation of the women’s category” last June, one of the first major decisions she made as the first woman to lead the Olympic body in its 132-year history.
Women’s eligibility was a strong theme in last year’s seven-candidate IOC election, with Coventry’s main rivals promising a stronger policy on leadership on the issue.
Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, three top-level sports – athletics, swimming and cycling – had already adopted rules excluding teenage transgender women.
The IOC document details its research that being born male confers protected physical advantages.
“Males experience three major testosterone peaks: in utero, during mini-adolescence in infancy, and from puberty through adulthood,” the document states.
He added that this gives men “individual gender-based performance advantages in strength, power and/or endurance-based sports and activities.”
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